Another event has been suggested to celebrate 200 years of the bicycle

I read recently that further suggestions were being considered by the City of Mannheim to be included in the festivities celebrating Karl Drais's pioneering hobby horse run in June 1817. The suggestion that caught my eye was a naked bicycle ride. OK, Mannheim is usually hot enough in summer to allow cycling in light weight clothing. In fact it is often too hot. If it is put on the official programme which I cannot see, I won't be taking part in this event. On the one hand I am over 70 and my body is no longer a thing of beauty and on the other hand the thought of my naked lower regions coming into contact with a Brooks' leather saddle does not appeal.

Preparations for an earlier clothed mass cycle ride in summer in Mannheim city centre

Back to Karl Drais and how would he crack the problem of motorised traffic clogging city streets?

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We both have an annual regional season ticket from our regional transport authority. There is a bus stop around the corner that during the week offers a service every quarter of an hour until 20:00 to the light rail service into Heidelberg, Mannheim and Weinheim. The bus service is half hourly at weekends. It's not perfect. The buses follow a circuitous route and the connection time to the light rail service is often a minute which can mean waiting ten, twenty or thirty minutes for the next tram if the bus is delayed in traffic. There is also an hourly free pre-bookable taxi service in the evening when the buses stop running, but the light railway offers a half hourly service. This means we might need to wait in Mannheim for an extra half hour. What this means is that if we are going to Mannheim on a Sunday or will be returning after 20:00, we take the car to the local shopping centre/mall ten minutes away by and park it there. The centre features a cinema and so there is no move to offer time limited parking on the British pattern. The snag is that if we just drive the car for ten minutes, its fuel consumption is higher than when it is warm and its exhaust gases are dirtier. 

What we could do is cycle to the shopping centre. We often do when we are shopping. There are bike racks available. There is a snag though. If a bike is left at the tram stop for a few hours there is a chance that some misguided individual will try to steal it or just jump on it to reduce to a pile of scrap. One idea that would improve matters would be lockable bike storage boxes. They need not be free. Put a few of these near every park and ride facility and more of us would cycle to the railway lines. This is not utopian or even rocket science. Some of the S-Bahn (suburban railway stations) in Rhineland Palatinate have banks of these boxes.

Wake your Karl Drais! How would he crack the problem of motorised traffic clogging city streets?

Karl Drais was the inventor of the the two-wheeled velocipede, also called Draisine or hobby horse. He was a lateral thinker always looking for ways to solve problems rather than just a mechanical tinkerer. In addition to the hobby horse he invented a device to record piano music on paper and a 16 character typewriter for use in court. As we have written before, next June will mark 200 years since he first had a hobby horse built and set off out in to the countryside near Mannheim on the best local road for a quick pint. 

Obviously the Mannheim city fathers have not ignored this anniversary, neither has the Mannheim Technoseum, the Province of Baden Württemberg's technical museum. The former are busy organising bicycle festivals and events. (Check our blog dated 25 March 2016). The latter has a major exhibition on the bike running until June next year. 

The museum has set up a quiz for school children based on the concept that the motor car is leading to collapse of mobility in cities. The question is: "What would Karl Drais invent now to stave off the death of mobility in urban areas." Participants are invited to suggest a traffic concept, an ultramodern, energy efficient vehicle or a plan for an especially cyclist-friendly city. Entries by 2 May 2017. 

I am not sure that this competition is asking the right questions. Any traffic concept would need to cut the number of motor vehicles in Mannheim whether:

• it's banning any vehicle bigger than, say a Smart car,
• a congestion charge system similar to London's, 
• banning all cars from the city centre  
• or building more protected cycleways, squeezing motor cars off the street. 

All of these are politically impossible until we get to the happy state where there are more cyclists than motorists, even then…

However, there is an energy efficient vehicle available right now. 

• It is called a bicycle or a tricycle. 
• It improves public health. 
• It is non polluting unless the engine has been eating garlicky food. 
• Its use leads to a traffic density that is higher than with the motor car. 
• It is safer. 
• Collisions between cyclists lead to fewer deaths. 


• One major disadvantage is that the cyclist is exposed to the weather. Maybe Karl Drais, a lateral thinker would be designing better waterproof but breathable clothing or an improved front fairing for a recumbent trike (See under accessories).

One way to cheaply improve the cyclist's lot in the Rhein-Neckar three province multi city metropolitan area is to link cycleways, such as they are, and quiet roads with a knooppunt or Knotenpunkt system (bicycle nodes). This system, invented by a German mining engineer, is to be found in Belgium in Flanders, the Netherlands and Germany in some areas of North Rhine Westphalia: Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Düren, Heinsberg, Leverkusen, Mönchengladbach, Neuss and Viersen.

Knooppunt sign combined with traditional signposts in Hook of Holland